Hey, GH.
For a while I've been thinking of how you would be able to fit an Alps metal leaf in a Cherry housing, as I love the feel of Alps, but the compatibility of Cherry switches. But, I never got around to doing anything with that idea because I thought that it would be "too difficult" and "nobody would care."
On Saturday, I went to the Seattle Mechanical Keyboards meetup. I listened to evangs' talk about how he designed the MiniVan layout, and how successful it has become. This got me thinking a bit. Maybe it *wasn't* impossible. But, I doubted it would be worth the effort and I still thought people wouldn't care enough.
During the convention, I saw many people with Alps boards, or people talking to each other about how much they liked Alps switches. I even saw someone with a Rama M65-A with modded zealios with 35g springs! These had the effect of the Alps tactile leaf, which allowed the actuation force to feel higher than the force post-actuation. Well, maybe people did care.
After the meetup, I was talking with manofinterests, and he invited me to go to Korean BBQ after the meetup. I sat next to Evan, and a couple of other people(don't remember names well, sorry!). We were talking about involvement in the community, and at some point someone said "If you have an idea, just put it out there and see where it goes." This statement is really what got me to follow through with this idea, so thanks a ton to both manofinterests and evangs for the inspiration and the opportunity to hear that line.
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ChALPS is a cherry housing with an Alps-like leaf spring for tactility. It is supposed to be 100% drop in compatible with Cherry keycaps, plates, PCBs, and LEDs. It is based on a Cherry linear switch, as I do not want the slider itself to create tacility, but the leaf spring to do so. The leaf spring will likely look something like the ones from the Tai-Hao APC switches. It will be held in place by the bottom housing, and it will sit in small "rails." The height of these "rails" will determine whether the switch is tactile or clicky. If the rails are full height, the leaf will not bend, and it will remain tactile. If the rails are half or less height, the leaf spring will bend forwards and snap back in the same way that the Alps clicky switches do.
As of right now, I have a prototype(a pretty bad/scratchy one) that feels surprisingly like an Alps tactile switch with a lighter spring. I will attach a link to a google folder at the end of this post which has pictures of the prototype switch, some basic drawings of what I think it will look like, and a video of the switch in action.
This post is designed to gauge interest. If I have enough interest, I will make more prototypes and go from there. What I would like from this post is constructive criticism, who's really interested, and what spring weights you would want. I am planning on making a Light, Medium, and Heavy for both clicky and tactile switches.
Thanks a ton for reading this post and spending your valuable time reading my ramblings.
http://www.strawpoll.me/13526541 https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0B1RvGbUCnm3GZUhueFdEYXBJZk0
